


O Mithrandir!

by Alex_Quine



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 12:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3135326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex_Quine/pseuds/Alex_Quine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Galadriel has the mighty task of bringing a Maia back from the dead and yet she hesitates...</p>
            </blockquote>





	O Mithrandir!

Every moment of the battle at Dol Guldur is engraven on her heart; above all the clasp of his hand, warm, strong, begrimed with the dust of the place so that it is as if she can feel every callous, the mark of men that he has chosen to take on, every line and whorl on his fingertips. The silent figure laid out before her is like him and yet…

They had found him three days since, placed on a rock beside the waterfall, Glamdring laid at his feet. She had known where to look, had heard his name whispered on the breezes even before the great eagle’s wings cast a shadow across the forest, but still it had been a wonder and a blessing so soon after his fall. And now he was hers to make anew, to wake and to set him on his way, to leave her side once more.

The body laid on its back beside the falls was naked; his hair, no longer grey and wild but snow white and straight, spread across his breast and his hands folded simply before him, shielding his groin. It seemed that he breathed, shallow and slow, but he did not wake at their coming, nor when they wrapped him in soft wool, lifted him gently onto a bier and carried him home. All sorrow and trial is wiped from his face in sleep and Galadriel thinks that perhaps the ghost of a smile sometimes plays upon his features, but still his eyes do not open.

This body is not that of the Grey Pilgrim; he has lost much of the wearing of men, the flesh reddened with cold and wild weather, the nails yellowed with age and too much pipe-weed, and yet she can see in the clean limbs, the long muscles beneath pale skin perhaps a younger image of the Maiar’s chosen form, one who is ageless, caught and framed by a master sculptor in marble at the moment of its greatest strength.

Galadriel has been tending to him in her every waking moment, using all her herb lore to command the spices burnt in the braziers that warm the room, to blend the oils that have kept his skin supple. And this figure is not cold like marble, but still he does not waken.

As yet she has not essayed her greater powers and now she realises that she is hesitating because somewhere in their thousand year’s friendship, she has come to know him as only himself, Mithrandir, more than her sometime counsellor and warrior for a just future for Middle Earth.

She is bound to him, as to Elrond who carries the third of the Elven Rings, but more, her heart has a place in it for the Maiar that would trouble her Lord, except that Celeborn _knows_ that the First-Born have never mated, will never mate, with the Maiar. His bond with the Lady is strong and whilst he wonders about how Mithrandir will appear if returned to the Undying Lands to become Olórin once again, he does not dwell on something so far into the future.

This day Galadriel lets her fingers, slippery with oil, intertwine with Mithrandir’s and their rings touch, sending a spark of fire along her arm. It is time enough, she thinks and before she can change her mind, she lifts him and walks across the room to the open doorway, out onto the balcony and thence down into the garden and towards the place where they found him.

On the river-bank, with the music of the waterfall wrapping them in sound, she strips him of the white robes in which they’d dressed him and lifting him again she walks into the shallow pool. For the first few steps her robe floats and then it sinks and she is striding forward, pushing against the deeper stream, her arms beginning to ache with the weight of him, until she is waist deep and the water takes him, floating, peaceful. His hair is streaming about his face, his beard is soaked with spray and very deliberately, she leans forward to press her mouth gently to his and drink in the droplets standing on his lips.

The current is beginning to entangle her feet in the hem of her gown and she shrugs it off, letting it float away on the stream. Now skin to slippery skin she pulls his body upright in the water, wraps one arm about his waist, letting his forehead rest on her shoulder and allows the fingers of her other hand to spider downwards until she can clasp his hand and so bring the rings together once more.

This time the pool becomes gradually warmer and the water begins to spiral about them until Galadriel can stand on a ledge of spinning water with Mithrandir in her arms. She no longer gazes on his face, hoping to see his eyes open for her head is thrown back and high above she sees them as lightsome figures in another place, naked, surrounded by a crystal clear stream that wraps itself about them, presses them close, breast to breast, as their hair spreads itself in a cloud of whitened gold.

Now he must come forth from his reverie, come to her even if it means that his leaving is the sooner and as the words sound in her head, she can see the lips of the elven figure moving.

 

Fall through fire and sink through water,

Pass Grey Pilgrim onward seeking,

Climb the stair and cleave the spirit,

Downward hurl the darkling creature.

I am calling, O Mithrandir!

Echoing your battle cry.

 

Once I fell and you would catch me,

Fingers clasping mine in succour,

Stronger for our joinēd hands and

Battle’s ending brings you near me.

I am waiting, O Mithrandir!

Waiting in a greening place.

 

Walk with me amidst the birches,

Saplings silvered o’er at twilight,

Seek the thread of moonbeams winding,

Winding onwards, growing stronger.

I am breathing, O Mithrandir!

Whispering the breath of life.

 

It is as the song ends that she realises that there is an answering breath ghosting along her collarbone, becoming stronger, hotter, scorching her as though the last memory of the Balrog is finally slipping away. Above them the figures are entwined in a mist of water, the elf maiden’s legs are wrapped about her lover’s waist and they arch backwards, mouths open in silent chorus, as the mist turns to red-gold and they disappear from her view in a blaze of light.

When men called him Gandalf the Grey, his eyes always seemed overshadowed by the bushy eyebrows that lowered over them. Now his white hair is swept back from his forehead, his beard and eyebrows are tame and as Galadriel stares into the grey-blue gaze that seems to reach inside her, questioning, probing, with power held barely in check, she says, “They will call you Gandalf the White now,” and she adds, “Mithrandir,” softly.

There is a voice in her head, heard low and far away, speaking, she thinks in old Quenya, but gradually it is coming nearer and nearer, the echo giving way to a deep murmur that rises and rises until at last he looks at her and knows her and says, “Lady,” in his own familiar voice. Then he looks more closely at her face, her hair and says quietly, “…only starlight and moonlight.”

As they would turn to leave the pool, he stumbles and she hastens to place an arm about his waist to support him as he regains his footing in Middle Earth. On the shore she dressed him once again in the white robes and he set the cloak about her shoulders with gentle hands and so, hand-in-hand, they wandered the grove of birch trees as Galadriel told him some, prompted his memories for more and listened as Mithrandir reconciled his task with his new strength and the love of those dear to him.

Too soon, too soon, they stood once more beside the waterfall a-waiting the eagle’s pleasure. He was dressed in white and girt about with a sword belt of elvish design. She had given him a new staff, straight and strong, worked from a white-beam and crowned with carving that, if you knew just how to turn it, showed in flowing runes the words of power that she had never heard before, that he had whispered in her ear.

He had told her where he was bound and she had furnished him with messages for those of the Fellowship he met. It may be that neither allowed themselves to finish the thought that if the Dark Lord should succeed they might never meet again, but at the last, as he would have bowed before her, Galadriel took his face between her hands and kissed his forehead and Mithrandir caught her wrist and interlaced their fingers so that the rings met and the fire raced through their bodies one more time.

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was created for Lordhellebore at lotr_sesa on LJ, who requested a bittersweet tale for Gandalf and Galadriel.


End file.
